I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
I frequently make pronouncements of great importance on Twitter @MarkAdomanis. Compliments? Complaints? Job offers? Please feel free to e-mail me at RussiaHand@gmail.com

Five Myths About Russia

The past several weeks have been very busy, and I haven’t had a chance to post quite as much as I’d like to. I thought I’d throw my hat back into the ring with a short post about where Russia is today. Part of what gets me so frustrated about most mainstream media coverage of Russia is that people tend to conflate the country’s condition (e.g. people drink a lot, don’t make much money, and are generally miserable) with its trajectory (e.g. people are drinking more, people are making lessmoney, and people are getting moremiserable). These are, obviously, two very different things, but they’re often treated as if they’re interchangeable.

Russia is, in a myriad of ways, still a messed up place, and you don’t need to look very far to find evidence of all kinds of nastiness, abuse, corruption, dysfunction and general awfulness. But what interests me is that, in contrast to the doom and gloom of most reporting, many of the country’s basic social indicators are actually improving. Life expectancy is going up, wages are going up, the birth rate is going up, and the death rate, the suicide rate, the murder rate, and the poverty rate are all going down. I thought I would put together 5 charts that push back against some of the mistaken narratives I often encounter in the media. This doesn’t mean that “Russia is awesome” but it ought to seriously complicate our picture of a country in which things are supposedly growing ever more desperate.

1. Russia’s population is “shrinking rapidly”

This might be the most common error in Western reporting. In reality, Russia’s population is marginally higher now, at the start of 2013, than it was in 2006. Russia’s population was declining rapidly during the late 1990′s and early 2000′s, but this decline has leveled off and the population has stabilized. Russia’s population could very well start declining again in the future, but at the moment it is actually growing (albeit at a glacial pace).

2. Russia’s economy is in “serious decline”

The idea that Russia’s economy is somehow “imploding” or “turning in on itself” is encountered most frequently among right wingers, but was also a favorite trope of centrist outfits like Newsweek or The Economist. While Russia is hardly an economic hegemon, its overall economic performance over the past decade has actually been pretty decent, especially when you compare its performance to the horrible post-crisis performances of many formerly communist countries in Eastern Europe. It is possible that Russia’s economy might implode at some unknown future date, but at the moment it is experiencing modest growth.

3. Just like the Soviet Union, Russia ”spends all of its money on the military”

The Russian government’s bombastic pronouncement that it would spend $700 billion on procuring new weapons in the years leading up to 2020 led a lot of people to think that Russia was returning to the garrison state it had been under communism, when military spending was 30% of GDP and the entire country was impoverished by the insatiable appetites of the “metal eaters” in the defense ministry. While I would agree that Russia’s defense spending is marginally higher than it ought to be, the actual level of spending as a percentage of GDP is modest in comparison to Russia’s own tortured past and even to the United States (the data is from SIPRI and ends in 2010 because that is the most recent year available)

4. Russia’s alcohol epidemic “continues unabated”

Russians drink a lot, there’s no arguing that. But, mercifully, they are drinking themselves to death a lot less frequently than they did in the past. The death rate from accidental alcohol poisoning has been shrinking rapidly over the past decade, and is now lower than it was even during the height of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign (when the Soviet government was doing things like bulldozing vineyards). Russia’s death rate from alcohol is still very, very high when compared with Western countries, but it is improving.

5. Russians “have more abortions than kids”

This was true for a very long time, from the early 1960′s until about 2007. Abortion really was Russians’ the preferred method of birth control. But with almost no fanfare the number of abortions in Russia (while still quite high in comparison to Western countries) has been plummeting.

Basically, what these graphs show is that

1) Russia still has a lot of problems, and it remains extremely troubled in comparison to developed Western countries, and

2) things in Russia are actually improving at a reasonable clip.

Number 2) is a huge contrast to the “period of stagnation,” when Russia’s most basic social indicators were visibly deteriorating. Thus Russia in 2013, unlike Russia of the mid and late 1970′s, has a growing birthrate, decreasing mortality, declining numbers of alcohol deaths, and a broadly flat level of military spending. If we want to understand what Russia is and where it’s going, we need to take its many positive developments into account.

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The World Bank, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita, gives $21,246 per capita PPP for Russia in 2011, and for 2012 the number will be about $23,000 -24,000 (in 2012 dollars, adjusting for growth and inflation).

Adomanis presents his numbers irresponsibly, without indicating the source, in the past, he never even indicated whether it was PPP or nominal, probably did not know such distinction existed.

He does now, but still no source, the GDP per capita figure he quotes is lower than given by any known statistics. For all I know, he pulled it out of his butt. In one of his previous articles he quoted Russian population decline as 5% instead of 5mln. Apparently, not only Adomanis puts out false data about Russia which is always worse than any reliable source, he also has no clue about the basics of economics and statistics.

Trashy, tabloid journalism at its worst. Just look at his poorly written Russophobic rant. Why all intellectual midgets aspire to write about Russia? It is above your level. Shouldn’t Adomanis write about something he can grasp intellectually? E.g. baseball bats, toilets, American flags.

Actually Mark is defending Russia in this article, i know where you are coming from, and i agree, Because Russia is much more economically powerful than he thinks, By the way, the World bank calculates Russia’s GDP PPP differently from most other sources it seems, with it saying that Russian GDP is 3 trillion, is pretty impressive, because that very near germany and that is europe’s largest economy, Still Russia is a clear 2nd powerhouse in europe at the moment, and will only grow, unless there is another global crash (which is actually fairly unlikely) Russia is still even in HIS fairy equal views politically speaking (and in comparison to most western Mass Media which just wants to get bad media sold) making progress…

though when He quotes things like “women have more abortions, than births” i begin to wonder where he read this stuff… i mean there are some pretty negatively toned and cleverly worded articles around especially on russia, but about abortions and acoholism getting worse, i cant say i have seen many even western media articles about this anymore.

The reason for the distinction is even with the PPP conversion the actual value of the dollar changes due to inflation so 10 PPP Dollars of 2011 is more than 10 PPP Dollars of 2012. So if we are looking at purchasing power this is important. Similarly even with 0% growth and no population change in both USA and Russia the GDP PPP / capita would keep going up slightly every year based on the USA GDP deflator, which is a measure of the price levels of all sectors of the economy.

Ivan I can explain that too but first understand that those figures are both from the World Bank as you can see on the graph. So my point is he is using official data and you can’t argue with that and he did label it correctly.

Secondly why the difference between 17k and 21k? To answer that question you need to ask why does the World Bank data differ from the IMF and when did this start?:

According to your source in WikiPedia for the year 2011 it is

21,246 according to the World Bank 16,736 according to the IMF

Why are they using different PPP conversion factors? Answer is this:

World Bank International Comparison Program (2005) which re-evaluated price levels and PPP conversion factors. There is a new one that was finished in 2011 as well.

Thus if you compare the data on the two graphs I showed you between 2005 and 2006 you will notice that the graph in constant US$ jumps by about 8.6% but the one in current US$ goes up by over 25%. Add on top of that the compounding effect of a higher base and you have the difference you see today. All this is due to the results of the 2005 WB ICP and the reason there is now a discrepancy between WB and IMF data.

I can keep explaining the methodology to you but the point is this data comes from the World Bank and thus your claim of him pulling it out of his ass is not valid, end of story.

Andrei, we do not need to go into methodology and why IMF data and World Bank data are different, I know that. I also know very well that IMF data and World Bank assessment of Russian GDP are different, that has never been a question of mine, it is a well known thing and it is completely irrelevant to the discussion. To quote you:

Ivan, his numbers are correct, just different. They are World Bank PPP figures adjusted for inflation that is why it says “Constant 2005 US$”. You can find them here:.

If his data is World Bank, according to you, why are you now comparing it to IMF if neither he nor I use IMF? Let us never mention IMF then. It is not relevant how World Bank got its numbers. What I am saying is that Adomanis’ data is not World Bank and does not agree with its data. Adomanis is quoting GDP per capita now as 15k in 2005 dollars. What I am saying (repeating myself) that after adjusting to 13.8% 6 years US inflation it is 17k, this is not the World Bank assessment currently.

OK, I accept that he got it from the World Bank data should have quoted the source though right in his post. Apparently both figures are from the World Bank and he chose a lower figure. 2013 data was supposed to bring Russia to the EU/US methods of computing GDP which would have been 20-25% higher due to imputed mortgage/rent but it has not been done.

Idiot, he’s one of the very few western writers who, in his own way, tries to somehow balance out the unbelievably and inexcusably lopsided russophobic propaganda garbage thas is spewed out daily by the western mass media machine and politicians!

Unlike the overwhelming majority of western journalists, writers and reporters he’s unquestionably WELL-MEANING, even if or when he errs, so instead of bashing him like he was some kind of arch enemy, why don’t you give him some slack and treat him with a little more respect that any non-brainwashed inquisitive westerner deserves!

Save your bashing and anger for russophobes (and I’ll gladly join you), but Mark Adomanis is anything but one of them